Bandwidth is a limited resource in any wireless communication network. As mobile terminals become more and more common, the demand for wireless communication capacity increases steadily.
Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to allocate the available bandwidth in a wireless communication system in the best possible way, in order to use the available bandwidth as efficiently as possible.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,925,068 discloses a method for allocating bandwidth in a wireless communication system. Time slots may be allocated in a flexible way for uplink or downlink transmissions depending on the bandwidth needs of a channel. Channel bandwidth asymmetry can be achieved in the sense that more time slots may be allocated in one direction than in the other direction (that is, more for downlink transmission than for uplink transmission, or vice versa). The designation of any time slot can be changed dynamically between uplink and downlink depending on the requirements. The decisions are based on reports of sessions that have been denied because of capacity problems.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,628,626 discloses a method for enabling high-speed data transfer in the downlink direction by using an additional wideband communication channel from the base station to the mobile terminals. This principle is based on the assumption that the bandwidth requirements are higher in the downlink direction than in the uplink direction. This is generally, but not always, correct.
WO 00/01188 discloses a method of allocating traffic channels to mobile terminals in dependence of various communication quality parameters in order to allocate channels more effectively in the wireless network.
The scheduling algorithms known in the art do not consider that each traffic session is bidirectional and that a scheduling decision in one direction will also affect the session behaviour in the other direction.